epistle; that its truths therefore are themselves the culmination of St Paul's conception of the doctrine of Atonement in the Person of Christ. What then is that atoning power in us, which is, for us, the consummation of the Atonement? It is spoken of in the first verse as "being in Christ Jesus." In the second verse it is described more fully as "the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ." In the sixth verse it is "the mind of the Spirit." In the ninth verse it is the indwelling of "the Spirit of God." This and the two following verses make it absolutely clear that certain significant variations of phrase are not only, in fact, variations without a difference of meaning, but that their identity is so obvious to the writer and to his readers, that it does not even need to be explicitly stated, but may be taken as of course. The varying phrases are "The Spirit of God""the Spirit of Christ"-" Christ "-"The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead"-" He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead.. through His Spirit that dwelleth in you."1

Could anything make clearer the absolute identity of the presence of Christ with the presence of the Spirit of Christ? or the identity of the presence of the Spirit of Christ with the presence of the Spirit of God who raised up Christ? The passage goes on to speak further of this presence of the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of God, in three references; (1) it is the realization of Sonship—" whereby we cry Abba Father";-it is partnership in the Sonship and 1Compare Dr Sanday's article, in the Dictionary of the Bible, on the word "God," p. 215a.

The passage Rom. viii. 9-11 runs consecutively thus; "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

Compare also the transition (which is not a transition) in Eph. iii—from "His Spirit" to "Christ"; and again from "knowing the love of Christ" to

inheritance of Christ;1 (2) it is an effectual succour to infirmity, which is in part spoken of as intercession for us, while it is is even more completely entreaty within us, of the full measure of which only He is cognizant who "searcheth the hearts" and "knoweth the mind of the Spirit"; and (3) it is an inseparable union of our very selves with the "love of Christ," or, more fully, "the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The phrases of the passage will receive some further comment from the last seven verses of 1 Cor. ii., where (1) the Spirit is the Spirit of God, and is God; for the Spirit of God is to God as the spirit of a man to himself:* (2) this Spirit of God is the capacity, in men who are capable of it, of insight into all realities of spiritual truth:5 (3) this spiritual condition of Christians is to "have the mind of Christ."6

It remains only to corroborate these conceptions of Pauline theology by glancing through the general epistle of St John. The very object with which this epistle is written is that its readers may quite fully realize what is realized with such wonderful vividness by St John himself, -that the meaning of life in Christ's Church is personal fellowship with the Incarnate Christ, and therefore, no less, with the Eternal God. "Yea and our fellowship is

being "filled with all the fulness of God." "For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every fatherhood (R. V. margin) in heaven and on earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God. Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen." Eph. iii. 14-21.

with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ." The method of union with the Eternal, is union with the Incarnate. "We have beheld and bear witness that the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world "_"Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father; he that confesseth the Son hath the Father also." 8 "If that which ye heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son, and in the Father." "He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life."5 "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."" It is, then, in primary reference (in this sense) to the Incarnate, that St John speaks of the ideal Christian life as knowing Him ("hereby know we that we know Him, if we keep His commandments ""), being or abiding in Him ("hereby know we that we are in Him; he that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked."8 "And now, my little children, abide in Him""): and insists upon the power of the indwelling One-"greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world," 10 and upon the absolute antithesis between that indwelling and sin, "Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither knoweth Him ""... "whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because His seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God." 12 Everything, then, turns upon the full recognition, in faith of mind and of heart, of the transcendent fact of Incarnation. "Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of

...

God?" To have such a belief is to have the internal witness to truth, and its end is eternal life. "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him”2 "these things have I written unto you that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the Name of the Son of God.” 3

This life is the actual presence of the Son (as above, "He that hath the Son hath the life"). This presence is spoken of as "an anointing": "The anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you. . . . His anointing teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie."4 And the sure evidence of its reality is the animating influence of its Spirit. "Hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us."5 And this Spirit is known to be the true Spirit,-as on the one side by its recognition and embrace of the Incarnation as the master-fact,—" Hereby know ye the Spirit of God; every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God:"6 so, on the other, by its manifest identity with the God who Himself "is love." "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love."7. . . " if we love one another, God abideth in us, and His love is perfected in us: hereby know we that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit."8 This Spirit, the certainty, nay the presence, of the Incarnation within us, is both truth, then, and love. "It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth." 9 "He that saith I know Him and keepeth not His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him: but whoso keepeth His word, in him verily hath the love of God been perfected." 10 The manifestation of life within

is love.

"We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren." 1 Reality of personal communion with the Eternal God, a result ipso facto necessarily following from reality of personal communion with Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son: and this, a communion in, and as, Spirit: a communion whereof at once the manifest evidence, and also the inner and essential reality, consist of identity of Spirit-the presence being the Spirit, and the Spirit manifesting the presence ;-a reality, then, of personal communion with the Spirit of the Incarnation, the Spirit of Love, which is the Spirit of God revealed in Christ: this is the essential Creed of St John, the declaring of what, to his consciousness, Christian faith and life mean.

The inquiry of the present chapter has been wholly undertaken as an attempt towards understanding, so far as it is possible for us to understand, the doctrine of God the Holy Ghost, as part of the total revelation of the Being of God. The things which have seemed to emerge from the inquiry may perhaps be summed up, in conclusion, in the statement of the following general positions.

I. The revelation of the Holy Trinity is a revelation wholly within, and based upon, the essential and indissoluble unity of God. At the same time the eternal distinctions within the Unity of Divine Being involve such essential relation of mutuality, as cannot be adequately expressed by any word of less import than the word Personality or Person. Human analogies are important, and do serve, but serve only within narrow limits, towards the intellectual vindication and illustration of this doctrine. The analogy which will probably be most suggestive to many minds is that of (a) what a man is invisibly in himself, (b) his outward material projection or expression as body, and (c) the response which that which he is,

1 I John iii. 14.